Monday, September 29, 2008

"The fact is, the markets work, and they are working," said Cheney in an interview in his White House office. "And people - some of the big companies obviously - have taken risks. Risk means risk. And there's an upside as well as a downside in some of the choices they've made. We have to be careful not to have this set of developments lead us to significantly expand the role of government in ways that may do damage long-term for the economy."

The same goes for Democratic efforts to curb the predatory lending practices that left naive homeowners in trouble, says Cheney: "We don't want to interfere with the basic, fundamental working of the markets."

Your markets are working alright! Thanks Dick, for making our case for socialism even more compelling and easier to win people over to. While the real solution to the crisis is a socialist revolution, here are some stopgap reforms to carry us through the year.

Use the newly nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to refinance all troubled mortgage holders with 30 year fixed rate notes on a fair and realistic valuation of their homes, not the over-inflated housing bubble prices. Let the investment banking industry take the losses on all refinanced price differences.

Institute an immediate and progressive wealth tax with severe penalties for capital flight.

Institute a immediate windfall tax for record profit making petroleum corporations, in fact, let's extend that to all the non-bid contract war profiteers as well.

Repeal the Bush tax cuts for the obscenely rich, create a much more progressive tax structure, and remove all tax loopholes and subsidies for corporations.

End the brutal occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq (with half of that 2.1B a week being used for reparations).

National single payer healthcare.

Take the 700B and rebuild inner cities, create a national public transportation system, and invest the rest in public research and development of alternative energy sources.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

The folks at the Wall Street Journal Online finally being honest about the inherent failure of free markets? Important how they don't mention the contradiction of privatization of profit, but socialization of losses, but it is the WSJ after all. A glimpse of how they view us:

...to the discomfort of workers -- companies are quicker to adjust wages, hiring and work hours when the economy softens.

In other words, the working class always bears the burden--during boom or slump. Our task is to organize against them placing this on us! Times like this expose their proffered excuse for sucking surplus value out of us, "because we [the capitalists] take all the risks," for the lie it always is.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

When I gave my sub-prime mortgage crisis talk in 2007, skeptics were saying it was no big deal. "The economy will rebound," "deregulation is always a good thing," trust the market," etc. Armed with Marxist analysis of economics and recognition of the fundamental principles of a crisis of overproduction, allowed us to see the sub-prime mess was just a precursor of a much larger catastrophe. A good time to re-read Rosa Luxemburg, to understand how credit eventually exacerbates crisis. This is playing out exactly the way she explains in "Reform of Revolution."

The bi-partisan neoliberal project is now bearing fruit. While the Bush gang certainly helped to accelerate this with their murderous 2.1 billion dollar a week occupations, the chicken were going to come home to roost eventually. It is going to take serious struggle on the ground to keep this entire thing from being placed on our backs.

A system out of controlCrucial analysis of the scope of the crisis, and addresses how there isn't any quick fix using their usual tools. This article is a must read!